Page:Train - Tutt and Mr Tutt (Scribner, 1922).djvu/140

 She flushed and bowed her head sadly, and instantly a poignant rage possessed him.

"A man I trusted absolutely," she replied in a low voice.

"His name?"

"Winthrop Oaklander."

Tutt gasped audibly, for the name was that of one of Manhattan's most distinguished families, the founder of which had swapped glass beads and red-flannel shirts with the aborigines for what was now the most precious water frontage in the world—and moreover, Mrs. Allison informed Tutt, he was a clergyman.

"I don't wonder you're surprised!" agreed Mrs. Allison.

"Why—I—I'm—not surprised at all!" prevaricated Tutt, at the same time groping for his silk handkerchief. "You don't mean to say you've got a case against this man Oaklander!"

"I have indeed!" she retorted with firmly compressed lips. "That is, if it is what you call a case for a man to promise to marry a woman and then in the end refuse to do so."

"Of course it is!" answered Tutt. "But why on earth wouldn't he?"

"He found out I had been divorced," she explained. "Up to that time everything had been lovely. You see he thought I was a widow."

"Ah!"